Model-driven Development for User-centric Well-being Support: From Dynamic Well-being Domain Models to Context-aware Applications

Applications that can use information obtained through device sensors to alter their behavior are called context-aware. Design and development of such applications is currently done by modeling the application's context or by using novel requirements engineering methods. If the application is to support the user's well-being, these methods fall short due to their technical focus. We propose a model-driven approach that deals with the specifics of the well-being domain by using a DSL that captures the user's personal well-being context. The development method is user-centric, rather than technology focused. Initial user experiments show promising results

A model for context awareness for mobile applications using multiple-input sources

Context-aware computing enables mobile applications to discover and benefit from valuable context information, such as user location, time of day and current activity. However, determining the users’ context throughout their daily activities is one of the main challenges of context-aware computing. With the increasing number of built-in mobile sensors and other input sources, existing context models do not effectively handle context information related to personal user context. The objective of this research was to develop an improved context-aware model to support the context awareness needs of mobile applications. An existing context-aware model was selected as the most complete model to use as a basis for the proposed model to support context awareness in mobile applications. The existing context-aware model was modified to address the shortcomings of existing models in dealing with context information related to personal user context. The proposed model supports four different context dimensions, namely Physical, User Activity, Health and User Preferences. A prototype, called CoPro was developed, based on the proposed model, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. Several experiments were designed and conducted to determine if CoPro was effective, reliable and capable. CoPro was considered effective as it produced low-level context as well as inferred context. The reliability of the model was confirmed by evaluating CoPro using Quality of Context (QoC) metrics such as Accuracy, Freshness, Certainty and Completeness. CoPro was also found to be capable of dealing with the limitations of the mobile computing platform such as limited processing power. The research determined that the proposed context-aware model can be used to successfully support context awareness in mobile applications. Design recommendations were proposed and future work will involve converting the CoPro prototype into middleware in the form of an API to provide easier access to context awareness support in mobile applications

GALLAG Strip: A Mobile, Programming With Demonstration Environment for Sensor-Based Context-Aware Application Programming

abstract: The Game As Life - Life As Game (GALLAG) project investigates how people might change their lives if they think of and/or experience their life as a game. The GALLAG system aims to help people reach their personal goals through the use of context-aware computing, and tailored games and applications. To accomplish this, the GALLAG system uses a combination of sensing technologies, remote audio/video feedback, mobile devices and an application programming interface (API) to empower users to create their own context-aware applications. However, the API requires programming through source code, a task that is too complicated and abstract for many users. This thesis presents GALLAG Strip, a novel approach to programming sensor-based context-aware applications that combines the Programming With Demonstration technique and a mobile device to enable users to experience their applications as they program them. GALLAG Strip lets users create sensor-based context-aware applications in an intuitive and appealing way without the need of computer programming skills; instead, they program their applications by physically demonstrating their envisioned interactions within a space using the same interface that they will later use to interact with the system, that is, using GALLAG-compatible sensors and mobile devices. GALLAG Strip was evaluated through a study with end users in a real world setting, measuring their ability to program simple and complex applications accurately and in a timely manner. The evaluation also comprises a benchmark with expert GALLAG system programmers in creating the same applications. Data and feedback collected from the study show that GALLAG Strip successfully allows users to create sensor-based context-aware applications easily and accurately without the need of prior programming skills currently required by the GALLAG system and enables them to create almost all of their envisioned applications.Dissertation/ThesisM.S. Computer Science 201

Context-awareness for mobile sensing: a survey and future directions

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power have empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provides the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects, and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen due to the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved, and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlighten them by proposing possible solutions

Triggering information by context

With the increased availability of personal computers with attached sensors to capture their environment, there is a big opportunity for context-aware applications; these automatically provide information and/or take actions according to the user's present context, as detected by sensors. When wel l designed, these applications provide an opportunity to tailor the provision of information closely to the user's current needs. A sub-set of context-a ware applications are discrete applications, where discrete pieces of i nformation are attached to individual contexts, to be triggered when the user enters those contexts. The advantage of discrete applications is that authori ng them can be solely a creative process rather than a programming process: it can be a task akin to creating simple web pages. This paper looks at a general system that can be used in any discrete context- aware application. It propounds a general triggering rule, and investigates how this rule applies in practical applications

Multi-Sensor Context-Awareness in Mobile Devices and Smart Artefacts

The use of context in mobile devices is receiving increasing attention in mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this article we consider how to augment mobile devices with awareness of their environment and situation as context. Most work to date has been based on integration of generic context sensors, in particular for location and visual context. We propose a different approach based on integration of multiple diverse sensors for awareness of situational context that can not be inferred from location, and targeted at mobile device platforms that typically do not permit processing of visual context. We have investigated multi-sensor context-awareness in a series of projects, and report experience from development of a number of device prototypes. These include development of an awareness module for augmentation of a mobile phone, of the Mediacup exemplifying context-enabled everyday artifacts, and of the Smart-Its platform for aware mobile devices. The prototypes have been explored in various applications to validate the multi-sensor approach to awareness, and to develop new perspectives of how embedded context-awareness can be applied in mobile and ubiquitous computing

Towards Activity Context using Software Sensors

Service-Oriented Computing delivers the promise of configuring and reconfiguring software systems to address user's needs in a dynamic way. Context-aware computing promises to capture the user's needs and hence the requirements they have on systems. The marriage of both can deliver ad-hoc software solutions relevant to the user in the most current fashion. However, here it is a key to gather information on the users' activity (that is what they are doing). Traditionally any context sensing was conducted with hardware sensors. However, software can also play the same role and in some situations will be more useful to sense the activity of the user. Furthermore they can make use of the fact that Service-oriented systems exchange information through standard protocols. In this paper we discuss our proposed approach to sense the activity of the user making use of software

Context-aware and automatic configuration of mobile devices in cloud-enabled ubiquitous computing

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00779-013-0698-3. Copyright @ Springer-Verlag London 2013.Context-sensitive (or aware) applications have, in recent years, moved from the realm of possibilities to that of ubiquity. One exciting research area that is still very much in the realm of possibilities is that of cloud computing, and in this paper, we present our work, which explores the overlap of these two research areas. Accordingly, this paper explores the notion of cross-source integration of cloud-based, context-aware information in ubiquitous computing through a developed prototypical solution. Moreover, the described solution incorporates remote and automatic configuration of Android smartphones and advances the research area of context-aware information by harvesting information from several sources to build a rich foundation on which algorithms for context-aware computation can be based. Evaluation results show the viability of integrating and tailoring contextual information to provide users with timely, relevant and adapted application behaviour and content

Context for Ubiquitous Data Management

In response to the advance of ubiquitous computing technologies, we believe that for computer systems to be ubiquitous, they must be context-aware. In this paper, we address the impact of context-awareness on ubiquitous data management. To do this, we overview different characteristics of context in order to develop a clear understanding of context, as well as its implications and requirements for context-aware data management. References to recent research activities and applicable techniques are also provided